Coping
by Naughty Captain Crieff
Summary: It has been three years and John is getting by on only what is necessary to survive.    Quite an introspective look on how Dr. Watson copes with his grief.


**A/N: This was supposed to be more poetry than anything, but as I added more and more, I lost that feel. However I do hope it maintains some of that. **

**Reviews much appreciated! And as always, the BBC owns this show and Conan Doyle owns the characters. Damn them both. **

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><p><strong>Knuckles are white as he clenches the shopping bags tight in his fists.<strong>

Bread and eggs and tea bags and toilet paper.

The bare necessities to maintain the functions required to go on.

To scrape by but barely be.

This was not living; it was surviving.

Milk.

He has milk too.

He buys it without thinking, until his fridge doors are full of it.

There is no one there to spoil it now.

**He sighs and in London's winter air the breath rolls from his lips in wisps like the Spector of a soul he once possessed.**

He is cold.

Beneath his coat. Beneath his skin.

**He walks home with collar up and shoulders hunched trying desperately to be the deaf to the cars racing by and the wind in his ears. **

He used to be able to hear music in London's every niche.

But each step he takes home now manages to be wholly tuneless.

Is there even music anymore without His violin; its longing melodies and gleeful staccatos?

**He speeds up.**

Trying to shake off his shadow. Trying to shake off every shadow before they can wrap their suffocating arms around him.

Since it happened the shadows seem harder to him. Darker. Angrier.

Longer.

It's as if he is trapped in an eternal midday. The sun always at its highest.

He cannot share this thought with anyone because who but him would choose the dark over the light?

But this sunshine burns his eyes and blinds him from reality.

It blisters his skin and twists his stomach making him wretch and sob.

He wants this to stop.

He wants the harsh light of this bitter truth to fade and for the cool night to engulf him.

He needs ignorance to relieve his grief.

**Did the walk home always take this long? The street seems to be stretching ahead of him as he goes. **

What is it Ella had said?

5 stages.

_Denial. How could one believe that He had not escaped Death's scythe?_

_Anger. He has come to snap and growl like a tethered dog at any attempt of comfort on the subject of Him. Alienating himself completely from the only three other people who might understand. _

_Bargaining. A Woman had once said that He believed in a higher power. Himself. And John realised now that he did too. Because when he bargains he does so beneath the shade of an evergreen, whispering pleases between strangled sobs to a slab of black stone bearing the earthly name of Him._

_Depression. As a Doctor for men who had seen and experienced the very worst the world had to offer, John knows the signs of depression. And yet he chooses to ignore those signs in himself. Even when the land started becoming that little less colourful to his weary eyes. _

_Acceptance. How could one believe that He had escaped Jim Moriarty's plot?_

But instead of coming out of the other end unscathed it just seemed to begin again.

And again.

And again.

His grief was cyclical.

Unending.

He copes, of course. Of course he does.

He goes on dates. He goes to the shops. He sometimes can sleep.

He even thinks he can remember laughing once.

Life goes on.

But behind his eyes the pain remains.

**He knows why the walk is taking so long now as the cobbles beneath his feet become sickeningly familiar.**

Baker Street.

**John's heart leaps in his chest as he approaches the black, unwelcoming door of 221b. **

It has been three years.

Of course he has come back to deal with problems, pick up belongings and see Mrs. Hudson. But hour visits had turned into minutes and minutes into standing on the door step, desperately hoping not to be invited in.

_**You're going in**_**, he thinks.**

And the decision is simple this time.

Because until then he had thought his heart a half dead thing, beating only when he was on the brink of death to pull him back from release.

But it had stirred. It had stirred for Him.

**He slips his key into the lock.**

He doesn't know why, but he's kept it with him for three years.

The walk up the stairs feels the same.

He doesn't know why it should feel different. But everything else does without Him. So why not this?

**Everything is almost exactly as it had been left the night He died. **

Ella says that it feels like when parents leave the room of a lost child undisturbed for years. A shrine to preserve a memory that needs to be let go of.

John disagrees.

The name of the detective has become a joke. It has been twisted into something _wrong_.

The rooms of 221b were the only true piece left of Him. And John wanted to keep it that way.

**He runs his finger along the dust of the mantle, teasing it from its slumber. **

It dances on the shallow beams of light before settling somewhere new.

_You can put back anything but dust. Dust is eloquent. _

"**STOP IT!" He screams into the empty flat at the voice in his head. **

_Stop haunting me._ He wants to scream but the sound of his own voice has scared him.

It is harsh and hard and it claws in his throat viciously.

Is that how other people hear him now? A lonely, bitter man with nothing left to live for?

Was it the truth?

**John lets his eyes close.**

Time to pretend.

Pretend He is still here.

Still turning up His collar.

Still giving John that look.

Still ruining the milk.

Still deducing.

Still being.

**John's hand has found the skull on the mantle and his fingers curl around the bone. **

There were a lot of things John never understood about Him. But he liked to think he understood the skull.

Not just for company.

_Memento Mori._

A reminder of death.

God knows He needed one.

**Suddenly, John's grip on the skull tightens.**

John doesn't need a reminder of death.

His has been hanging over his head since that day at the hospital.

The Fall.

It has replaced the savage gunfire and the bone rattling bombs of his nightmares.

And he hates it.

He hates having to fall into those lifeless blue eyes.

Hates having to feel for a pulse that is never there.

Night after night after night.

_Memento Mori._

**Before he can stop himself, John sends the skull hurtling across the apartment where it hits the wall opposite the fireplace and splinters into a hundred shards of bone.**

"**LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME!"**

**John's screams bounce from the walls of 221b and he brings shaking hands to run through his hair. **

He has been lost for years.

And there is no reason, but he has decided that right now, in this graveyard of memories, it is his turn to be angry.

"**You can't just walk into my life and change it completely. Make me a better man. Make me **_**care **_**about you then lie and leave." **

"**YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE."**

Ruined his life by making it better. There was some kind of ironic poetry in that.

"**This isn't fair! What you've done, it's not **_**fair, **_**Sh-" John chokes on His name as he has done every time for the past three years. **

That name means everything to John Watson. It means life and death. Because He had given John the life war had taken from him but ripped it away again with His death.

That name fills John with rage and longing, hope and despair.

That name is a contradiction. Just as He was in life.

Perfect because he was so wonderfully flawed.

The most human of human beings.

And how he misses Him.

**John collapses into an armchair and attempts to calm his shaking hands. **

He knows this was his grief at its worst. And that life doesn't always feel like this. That he isn't always going to feel this empty.

Maybe it will take a day. Maybe a week. But the fog will eventually lift.

As it always does.

But that doesn't make _this_ easier.

"**I miss you. You insufferable, arrogant, wonderful man."**

**He speaks to the armchair across from him as if He is sitting there, plucking the string of His violin and grimacing at his sentiment. **

**He takes one deep shuddering breath before releasing, in barely a whisper, "Sherlock Holmes."**

And that's it.

The anger is not gone. The pain has not disappeared.

But suddenly the lines on John's face feel a little less deep and his eyes feels a little less heavy.

The blinding light of Sherlock's death eases, just slightly. It is not the night he craves but it is just enough so that John can finally see where he is. What he is doing and how it is damaging him.

All because he has said that name.

Acknowledgment; Sherlock Holmes is not everything.

Almost everything. But not quite.

**John pulls himself up and moves towards the door. **

He'll come back again soon, to see , but he knows he won't step a foot back into this room again for a long time.

So he places a hand on the wall, tracing the shapes on the wallpaper, as if he has made some great connection with this bit of wall especially, and says a silent goodbye to those lost souls.

The detective. And the blogger.

**He sighs and takes those few steps to the top of the stairs, leaving the threshold of Sherlock's ruins. **

**And just as he believes he has been given freedom, John Watson's heart is stopped. **

"**John?"**

That voice.

Tenor.

Like the deep vibrations of a cello.

John never thought he'd hear that voice again.

He had become resigned to never hearing that voice again.

**John turns to the source, hardly breathing. Hardly believing. **

Those eyes.

Like ice. Smooth and cold.

But melting.

John thought the last time he'd see those eyes, they'd be empty. Devoid of life.

Then the lips John thought would never make another arrogant sound, begin to move.

"**You smashed my skull."**

**John feels his fingers curl into a fist at his side and if the detective notices he doesn't say anything. **

**He doesn't make any attempt to move when John raises the fist. **

**Or to duck when it comes flying forward. **

**And when the knuckles eventually connect with the dead man's face he falls back in silence.**

**From the floor, Sherlock looks up through black curls at John .**

The skin on his face is pulled a little tighter around those cheekbones and his suit hangs from his frame more than it should- the perils of giving up Mrs. Hudon's motherly care- but other than that he is exactly the same.

"**I deserved that." Sherlock says, brushing his fingers over the mark on his cheek. A small smile tugs at his lips at his doctor's reaction. **

**John mimics Sherlock, bringing a hand to his cheek, but for a different purpose. **

**The wetness beneath his fingers confirms it.**

**He's crying. **

"**You're damn right you did." He snaps, brushing tears away, though the bite doesn't carry. **

**Because he's smiling too. **


End file.
